ights, and their inheritance as a free people. The high qualities they
have undoubtedly shown in the course of the war, their tenacity,
patience, and discipline, show that, under better influences, they may
become worthy to take their part in advancing the true destinies of
America.

It is yet too early to speculate with much confidence on the remote
consequences of the war. One of its more immediate results has already
been to disabuse the Southern mind of some of its most fatal
misconceptions as to Northern character. They thought us a trading
people, incapable of lofty sentiment, ready to sacrifice everything for
commercial advantage,--a heterogeneous rabble, fit only to be ruled by
a superior race. They are not likely to make that mistake again, and
must have learned by this time that the best blood is that which has in
it most of the iron of purpose and constancy. War, the sternest and
dearest of teachers, has already made us a soberer and older people on
both sides. It has brought questions of government and policy home to
us as never before, and has made us feel that citizenship is a duty to
whose level we must rise, and not a privilege to which we are born. The
great principles of humanity and politics, which had faded into the
distance of abstraction and history, have been for four years the theme
of earnest thought and discussion at every fireside and wherever two
men met together. They have again become living and operative in the
heart and mind of the nation. What was before a mighty population is
grown a great country, united in one hope, inspired by one thought, and
welded into one power. But have not the same influences produced the
same result in the South, and created there also a nation hopelessly
alien and hostile? To a certain extent this is true, but not in the
unlimited way in which it is stated by enemies in England, or
politicians at home, who would gladly put the people out of heart,
because they themselves are out of office. With the destruction of
slavery, the one object of the war will have been lost by the Rebels,
and its one great advantage gained by the government. Slavery is by no
means dead as yet, whether socially in its relation of man to man, or
morally in its hold on public opinion and its strength as a political
superstition. But there is no party at the North, considerable in
numbers or influence, which could come into power on the platform of
making peace with the Rebels on their